{"id":3030,"date":"2003-07-24T10:32:14","date_gmt":"2003-07-24T09:32:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-12-29T22:05:06","modified_gmt":"2012-12-29T22:05:06","slug":"xap-to-c-bus-gateway-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/c-bus\/xap-to-c-bus-gateway-update.html","title":{"rendered":"xAP to C-Bus Gateway Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/images\/news\/xap_rabit_small.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Submission by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ukusa.demon.co.uk\">Kevin Hawkins<\/a> &#8211; OK &#8211; another update. This is of the Rabbit development system with the following piggyback boards installed &#8211; a Rabbit 3200 core attached lower left corner, plus the C Bus SIM upper centre (blue board) and a 4 line graphic lcd display with keypad and LED&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"sj-gblock\">\n<script language=\"javascript\">\n<!--\ngoogle_ad_client = \"ca-pub-5598479065369258\";\ngoogle_ad_width = 300; \ngoogle_ad_height = 250; \ngoogle_ad_format = \"300x250_as\"; \ngoogle_ad_channel = \"7058025304\"; \ngoogle_ad_type = \"text_image\"; \ngoogle_color_border = \"FFFFFF\"; \ngoogle_color_bg = \"FFFFFF\"; \ngoogle_color_link = \"52a79f\"; \ngoogle_color_url = \"CFFFDF\"; \ngoogle_color_text = \"000000\"; \n\/\/--> \n<\/script>\n<script language=\"javascript\"  src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"><\/script>\n<\/div>The power supply connector is upper right corner and the blue Ethernet cable emerges centre left. The two wires (white and blue) are the C-Bus connection. For those interested the power supply components are top right on the main pcb and the space at the top left is for a secondary Rabbit &#8216;slave&#8217; processor. Two DB9 connectors on the right hand side offer extra RS232 serial ports.<\/p>\n<p>A very productive week really &#8211; I have totally re-coded the web server and the ftp server &#8211; I had borrowed some code earlier and I think in later versions of Dynamic C (v8) more extensive libraries now allow me to implement these in a much neater fashion. However I learned an awful lot from the previous code both about how web servers actually work, how to implement pages with dynamic content and about C itself so it was well worth it. So we now have a web server with dynamic pages for C-Bus content, and an ftp server with both anonymous (read only) access and an administrator who can create pages for the web server to use. I am just now looking into the best way to allow people to include their own dynamic content. I have the C based cgi routines working too. The C-Bus side has been running reliably now for some time and only balks at a few of the more complex message streams (ignored). I have still to incorporate some group naming into both the web displays and the xAP messages, this means reverse engineering the C-Bus project files format or manual entry<\/p>\n<p>I have also made progress on my hardware solution. I have got ten boards made up as a partial hand build so no fancy silkscreens\/solder masks, plus there will be a couple of link wires on the board. Photos soon when I receive the boards. These look nothing like the photo btw, they are much simpler in design incorporating power supply, Rabbit mounting sockets , extra I\/O headers, serial port level converters and C-Bus SIM mounting.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/images\/news\/xap_rabit.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>These units will simply offer a C-Bus interface (via a SIM) and a spare RS232 port. I will use this port as a serial to Ethernet xAP bridge (probably not in initial software release ). Actually there is another spare serial port that can either be connected to a C-Bus RS232 computer interface obviating the need for the C-Bus SIM &#8211; or in my case I will be using this for a connection to the Galaxy Alarm panel. As few of you need this I &gt;MAY&lt; look at other options, for example connection to a Meteor Caller ID unit or an X10 interface or to provide a basic control protocol (non xAP) for connection to say HomeVision or ACE. We&#8217;ll see. This would all be extra functionality, possibly chargeable.<\/p>\n<p>Later on I may have a more capable board with other interfaces but I&#8217;ll see how these go first.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230; it looks like I may need some early adopters soon &#8211; the board uses a Rabbit 2200 core and needs a SIM too unless you connect directly to your C-Bus PC interface. The cost of the board, including the software will be approx \u00a350 to UKHA&#8217;ers. In addition you need a Rabbit core with Ethernet interface at around \u00a345 (2200 &#8211; 256\/128K)or \u00a365 (2250-512\/512K) depending on what size RAM you choose &#8211; I stongly recommend the latter. You need also either a C-Bus RS232 interface which you probably have already or a C-Bus SIM which will add another \u00a350. So if you are interested in reserving a board email me now. If I get a very low level of interest I shall probably not make any more. Please note the board is not in any way cased or CE approved and does not come with a power supply either &#8211; you need to provide a small wall wart that provides 9-12V DC &#8211; I can supply these too if you like. I should have boards available in around 3 weeks or so. I have assumed the sale of 10 units to get a small price break on the cores.<\/p>\n<p>BTW &#8211; early on in the products life there are inevitably going to be bugs. You can&#8217;t upload new firmware to these units from a PCvia a serial port &#8211; either the units will have to come back to me or you will have to buy a programming cable from the UK distributor which costs around \u00a325. If you do the latter I will be posting updates on my website for new features \/ bug fixes.<\/p>\n<p>Please note that I am making no profit on these early boards and I am not charging for the software either. Accordingly nor am I promising to continue to develop the product either, however I will ensure that the current C-Bus feature set works as it should. Extra features may be chargeable later but it will always be a low cost upgrade. Later on in a commercial release when the product is more mature the C-Bus option may well be chargeable as a software option for the board.<\/p>\n<p>Hope that makes sense I am trying to be as fair as possible, months of work has gone into this from my side and although I don&#8217;t want in any way to profit from the UKHA members for this (I did it for my own need) I am not going to expose myself to a loss on building and selling hardware either. You can buy the Rabbit (and programming lead) from the UK distributor and the C-Bus SIM from Clipsal if you prefer, and just the board and software from me at \u00a350.<\/p>\n<p>Cheers Kevin<\/p>\n<p><strong>Want More?<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ottomate\">Follow us<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AutomatedHomeUK\" target=\"_blank\">Like us<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook, or subscribe to our\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds2.feedburner.com\/automatedhome\">RSS feed<\/a>. You can even get these news stories\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=AutomatedHome&amp;loc=en_US\">delivered via email<\/a>, straight to your inbox every day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Submission by Kevin Hawkins &#8211; OK &#8211; another update. This is of the Rabbit development system with the following piggyback boards installed &#8211; a Rabbit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-bus"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12034,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030\/revisions\/12034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}